


Never Would I Thought

by Ghostly_Galleon



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Fluff and Angst, I don't have an outline for this so we'll see how it goes, M/M, Matthew's POV, Not Beta Read, Post-War, Soulmates, World War II, a rarepair of mine please dont bully
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:14:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostly_Galleon/pseuds/Ghostly_Galleon
Summary: In the mountains of Italy Matthew and many others have been pinned for months. Finally, plans are made for the battle that would inevitably change the world and lead to his first glimpse of his soul mate before they meet again, after the war.For soulmates, they never did seem to be a likely couple, but together they'll find a way.
Relationships: Canada/Germany (Hetalia), GerCan
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	Never Would I Thought

**Author's Note:**

> Prologue chapter to get things started! Sadly Ludwig wont be introduced just yet but soon uwu

There was very little to give a man solace in the midst of the war. 

It was hard to inspire hope among men scrambling around the battlefield like rats, with rats. They were cogs, cogs in a machine turning, turning. Many men had wives at home waiting, family, children, it was all the same, but some didn’t. Matthew recalls the men that came here to die, to die doing something with meaning, to do something for their country. There had been men with fathers who never came back from the first war, there were boys in his who barely spoke english, men from Algeria, from India, places so far away from the conflicts in Europe. 

Matthew spent his time with the younger men. Some of them had lied their way into these trenches, all of them were unprepared for the horrors of war. Even Matthew had lied to get in, but he was the right age now, he’d been eighteen years old for two years. Funny, isn't it? 

“I caught one!” 

“Peter, quiet down-”

“But look at the size of this one, I’m gonna cook it up real good tonight, just you wait!” 

From his hands dangled a rat, still struggling to break from his grasp. Peter was one of the young ones. He was a wiry little kid, no more than sixteen although he absolutely insisted he was eighteen just like Matthew. 

“Well then quit letting it wriggle around like that, it’ll get loose.”

“Oi, oi, I’m not stupid!” he huffed, his accent very distinctly British, for that was the army which he was a part of. Troops had been coming in from all over preparing for battle.

“....Right.” 

Matthew heaved a sigh as Peter ran off, patting his pockets until he found which one had his pack of cigarettes. As much as Peter annoyed him Matthew understood. There was a lot of pain in the war, a lot of hurt, but most of all there was a lot of empty time. It was boring, incredibly so. There were hours upon hours of waiting, listening for noise from the German side. It was a boring existence. They had been pinned down for months, occasionally leading charges yet none of them succeeded, not a single one.

It was hard to inspire hope in boys, chasing rats through mud, but there was one thing that kept a lot of them going…

Under the sleeve of his shirt, on his forearm there were words, they were written in small and neat print, “Ich kann ihn nicht töten.” 

Matthew had never bothered to translate it, as he got older, and as the war became an apparent inevitability, he was too fearful of what it might say. 

German. 

He slid a slender cigarette from his pack and placed it between his lips.

The writing was in German.

He stuck a match, and brought it to his face.

He wonders if the Germans win, he wonders if he meets them in some German town in the middle of the war. Would he have to desert his comrades to run off with some German civilian because they were his soulmate? Or would they meet after this was all over? He hoped to god it was the latter, he prayed it was. 

He rolled up his sleeve to look at the writing again, eyes combing the letters for extra details, but the tattoo was burned into his mind now, nothing about it was new. 

“Matthew!”

He tears his eyes away from the writing, shaking the sleeve back down his arm and pulling the cigarette from his lips, coughing smoke through his nose in his startlement. “Yes?” he wheezes out, looking over to meet the gaze of the man who had called for him, Arthur Kirkland.

“Whoa there Matthew, easy.” he snorts, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he leans against the rocky trench wall, “Just wanted to tell you a rumor I heard. Something about some troops being on their way, some poles, some kiwis, even more bloody yanks.”

Matthew blinks, flicking ash from his cigarette and then looking away. “And what of it?”

“They’re planning an attack, a big one this time, full frontal… bunch of nutters if you ask me. Absolutely lost the plot.” he shakes his head, “Just thought you might like to know.” 

“They’ve gone mad.”

“Yes, well, they’re calling it Operation Diadem.”


End file.
